Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Will The New Liberal Admin Finally Go After Harper's Policies And Practices Or Will They Go Back To Attacking The New Democrats?

The strategy that the Liberals were using this past fall was at best, idiotic - at worst, suicidal. In the midst of tumbling poll numbers, Iggy's former Liberal brain trust decided that they would force an election on Canadians and enticed their blogging hordes to try and savage the New Democratic Party. That worked really well for them, didn't it?

So, back to the drawing board - fire all the staff - start from scratch with Chretien's old crew.

The big question that political observers are waiting to gauge is what will the new Liberal message be?

Will they FINALLY start going after the policies and practices of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, or will they return, again, to daily ridiculous attacks on the New Democrats.

The Liberals' problem is that they can't comprehend why anyone would support a party other than the Libs and Cons. From their perspective, capitalism is awesome and the business class is honourable, so what the hell are people doing listening to a party of labour?

Jennifer ... read this post and the FIRST comment, where 4 or 5 Liberal bloggers were caught using the same line in separate posts all within a few minutes of each other.

Those of us who closely monitor what Lib bloggers post, are very careful to compare the similarity and language that these Libbloggers use. Clearly, the OLD Iggy crew, were in contact with them, directing them in their attack messages against the New Democrats ... fer gawds sakes ... they didn't even deny it!!

I must have missed that memo. I get bulletins and releases from the Liberal Party almost every day, and I never saw that quote in any of them. And I just did a search of the media release archives on the Liberal website - it's not there either.

I'm not saying it couldn't have happened (don't NDP bloggers get memos like that?). I just find it far more likely that they all went looking for a relevant Jack Layton quote on the day and the hour that the NDP voted to support the Conservative government.

One thing I did check (just for fun) was the number of times the word "NDP" appears on the Liberal website as opposed to the word "Conservative". Turns out, they talk about the Conservatives more than five times as often as the NDP (1850:321).

On the NDP website however, the word "Liberal" is used almost as often as the word "Conservative" (1660:1980).

One of the things I like about having my blog postings appear on 'Progressive Bloggers' is that I am sure to be read by at least a few Libs as opposed to an exclusive NDP readership. The reverse is also true ... I actually read more Lib bloggers than you would think.

That a handful of Liberal bloggers know how to use Google advanced search on www.ndp.ca to discover that the NDP message of that day was inconsistent with previous messages of the day really doesn't prove a conspiracy among bloggers or a close relationship with the former Ignatieff brain trust.

If the NDP wants to flip flop and shift positions in a manner consistent with the best or worst of the old line parties, they shouldn't expect a free pass from the rest of us. We can play silly bugger with the best your side has.

And anybody who thinks I'm taking instructions from anybody on Ignatieff's current or former staff, hasn't really been reading me...ever.

I was actually searching the NDP and Liberal Party websites themselves and not the blog aggregators because... well, I don't seem to be able to do that.

Anyway, restricting the search to Sept.1 to Oct.15, the results were almost exactly the same: the Liberal Party was talking about the NDP way less than the NDP were talking the Liberals.

There were certainly a lot of mutual accusations of hypocrisy flying around at the time, on both the official and blogger level. But let's face it - both parties had, for whatever reasons, reversed their previously held positions, so a certain amount of pointing and laughing on both sides was inevitable, if counter-productive.

BTW, I usually only ever read ProgBlogs (not a big Cherniak fan), and when scanning through I rarely distinguish between NDP and Liberal bloggers in my own mind unless they make it obvious. Which really isn't very often.

I worded that poorly - what I meant to say was that I always read ProgBlogs, but I hardly ever read Liblogs or Blogging Dippers (I'm a member of ProgBlogs and LibsOnline).

I also wanted to say that I think Stimpson is making some pretty broad generalizations about "Liberals". Which Liberals are you talking about? Maybe you haven't noticed, but both the membership and the caucus of the Liberal Party span a pretty wide spectrum of political beliefs, from neo-Liberal to borderline socialist, with the middle being... well, somewhere in the middle.

Just because our current leadership tacks further to the 'right' on some issues than some might like doesn't mean that ALL Liberals are like that, or that it always has or always will be so.

Jennifer, I think you have hit on why the Canadian voting public is unsure about the Liberals ... no one can determine who or what they are and what they stand for!

"Which Liberals are you talking about? Maybe you haven't noticed, but both the membership and the caucus of the Liberal Party span a pretty wide spectrum of political beliefs, from neo-Liberal to borderline socialist, with the middle being... well, somewhere in the middle."